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The past Novell-Microsoft interop agreement, the one being renewed now, called for Novell to attend OOXML committee meetings in ISO, to implement OOXML, etc.

How much of that continues now?

I'm more than a little concerned that Microsoft now has its fingers in LibreOffice, at least by proxy. From the Membership Committee members who pick who can and who cannot join the Document Foundation, to the small number of engineers who control write access to the master source code repository, LibreOffice is dominat

LibreOffice is a continuation of Go-OO which was already led by Novell/SUSE and LO was initiated when the first MS deal was still ongoing. Everybody joining LO knew that. This deal renewal changes nothing in this respect.

Um, is it not a good thing that more companies are offering Linux support, no matter how vile you think those companies are? It lends credibility to Linux as an enterprise and small business solution (and let's be honest - Linux is king of the datacentre but when it comes to in-house servers, they're still primarily Windows. If Microsoft wants to erode their own market share, why are you complaining?)

If Microsoft wants to erode their own market share, why are you complaining?

Microsoft is NOT replacing Windows servers with SLES servers, they are replacing RedHat and other Linux servers with SLES. So, they are NOT "eroding" their own market share, obviously. How does it benefit Microsoft to replace RH servers with SLES servers that they've donated? RH servers are set up as "Master Browser" servers. The SLES servers that replace RH servers are NOT configured to be Master Browsers and are more e

Microsoft's voucher program for SLES does not demand that RHEL is installed in the first place. And they are offering services to migrate to SLES. So what? It's not like Red Hat does not offer similar migration options.

Red Hat will still be healthy even if a few customers migrate to SLES.

There are hundreds of hits for "microsoft sues". I grabbed the first one that looked remotely relevant. I insist that Microsoft's grand strategy hasn't changed - it's just slower moving, and sneaky. They still dream of being the only operating system on earth, or at least having every other operating system paying them royalties.

Here is another: http://www.huliq.com/3257/paul-allen-co-founder-microsoft-sues-11-companies-over-patents [huliq.com].
Let's not be ignorant to reality just because you would rather believe something to not be true or because you support it. Microsoft's guerilla tactics are very real. Even the smallest amount of research will prove that. If you want something bad enough, patience is a strong virtue to have. Personaly, I say Microsoft can have SuSe and take Ubuntu with it. My server will continue to run Debian, my desto

I'm confused. Someone who doesn't even work for Microsoft sueing is somehow Microsoft's fault? Wow. I'd say that's a stretch even for you, but I can guarantee you'd spin some bullshit about how Microsoft funds and pushes for IV's lawsuits despite having absolutely no evidence other than your LSD-induced-level paranoia anyway.

Admittedly it was a poor attempt on my part to convey the ethics on which Microsoft was founded by offering impertinent information relative to the OP. However, if you would put your energy towards educating yourself rather than being angry and belligerent you would understand that the underlying message is still true. You can start here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_litigation [wikipedia.org]. Then you can UTFW and find countless other cases by and against Microsoft. They are plentiful.

Apple has a litigation page [wikipedia.org] too. Your link does not really show much out of the ordinary. Every large company who has a portfolio of patents will most likely have a history of lawsuits. Is there any evidence of Microsoft having a disproportionately large number of patent disputes for its size?

If anything, its willingness to provide licenses for their IP shows a preference for keeping disagreements out of the legal system.

My OS will always be GNU/Linux and Microsoft can go fuck itself. As long as I live, I'll make sure, no matter what ilegal things I do, that there will be Software Freedom. Microsoft is pure evil -- and yet they're not bad enough to destroy us. I seriously hope *the world* soon tells people not to work at MS.

It might be pointless to you Coward, but it isn't for me. I actually modify many things that I use based on my needs. I also share those changes with my friends. I couldn't legally do that in another Operating System and I wouldn't do it in anyway if a moneythirsty company didn't allow me to. And of my friends that use Windows, nearly all of them envy the many things that I can do with my OS and the way I change everything to suit my needs, down to the source-code. Sure, Windows is still better in many thin

The link you provide has nothing to do with this article other than it's Microsoft suing another company over IP issues.

While everyone can agree that Microsoft is aggressive with their IP catalog, I haven't seen any evidence that the patent deal between Microsoft and Novell or SUSE is part of their embrace, extend, and extinguish strategy.

Go read the publicly available part of the terms then. Or have a lawyer read it for you.

They didn't promise ANY indemnity against anyone who made money off of their work, or shared the source code, unless that source code was included in Novell's Suse. Presumably that now will apply to Attachmate's Suse...but since the promise is essentially worthless (e.g., you aren't indemnified if you submit the work to Suse, and they decide not to use it, or if you don't submit it to them, but put it on sourceforge, etc.) it really doesn't matter who you would need to get to approve your work.

Then there are the parts of the agreement that aren't public. Since the publicly visible parts are so appalling (I'm supposed to be grateful for THAT!!??) I find it hard to imagine what the rest is like. Probably services that Suse must perform for them in return for the agreement. (Which does, let's admit it, pay Suse, or it's owning company, a bit of cash.)

Since I saw an analysis of the agreement, I've refused to have anything to do with Suse.

I was shooting for some cheap "funny". If OS cost were actually a problem for them, MS could either come up with some funny-money internal invoicing scheme that made each copy of Windows Server effectively free for their cloud division, or they could just run CentOS...

Why would Microsoft need to obtain Linux licenses? They can freely download, distribute, or even fork it, or they can choose from a number of BSD Unixes. They don't need a "license" to run any Linux back end.

I see this more as Microsoft working a little bit with Linux for now, since they see the light at the end of the tunnel, only in Microsoft's case it's a high sped freight train bearing down on them. It can't hurt them to be closer aligned for Linux, so they can jump on the UNIX train if the need arises

Surely you haven't read the news. You're also so pathetic that you can't even realize facts like Android popularity, supercomputers and many many servers around the world. Congrats on jerking one off to your MS pc man.

Yeah I gotta give it to you, Windows isn't shitty, that was me getting all crazy. It is oriented for the noob (click click click) and ethically incorrect for what I want (I need to actually change stuff from the command line and I do not want nice UIs). Still, the money idea (not the "PC everywhere idea") is a full blown piece of shit supported by many people. And of all the Windowses I've touched, I'd still go with XP. 7 is, like many things, "built to please the eye" and not "built to be useful".

server means linux in web hosting and datacenter world. there is no mention of microsoft at all. those companies which offer ms based hosting offer it as a specialty, niche market. not as mainstream market. in short - whatever site you visit on internet, chances are 90% that its running on apache on a linux stack.

you shouldnt trust netcraft. first, microsoft does a lot of trickery in order to show market share in server market too, not unlike any other field. once, they had a deal with godaddy to serve parked domains from iis servers. this lead to a lot of apparent 'sites' appearing to be served from iis servers. however, in actuality these were just parked domains, pointing to the same boxes. at that period it inflated the statistics considerably.

In "cloud computing" Microsoft's market share is nearly nonexistent. The back end is all Linux, BSD, and Java stacks. Windows hosting is quite rare.

The PC is waning. Macs, smartphones, and tablets are rapidly replacing conventional PCs for many people, and for almost everyone on the go. Few if any people choose Windows Mobile smartphones, and Microsoft rendered the once-exploding PocketPC platform irrelevant by neglect many years ago. It's an Android + iDevice market on the front end/thin client/client side, and other players may as well not exist. So, with the PC market becoming smaller and smaller, and the server market growing larger and larger, and being based mostly on open-source back ends, Microsoft HAS to be dabbling in the UNIX world if not to embrace it, at least to gain insight into how clients are using and rearchitect Windows to provide UNIX's strength - or simply exit the industry and start something else instead. Maybe they can make mops or something?

Microsoft is involved with SUSE for Microsoft's own benefit, not for the OSS "community," not for Linux users, and certainly not for their own customers (since when does Microsoft give a crap about its users? Money is their golden calf!).

The share of Linux (and by that I mean any OS executing a Linux kernel) is way more than 1%.Evidence from the sales of games etc puts the desktop penetration at around 10% (if not more http://tinyurl.com/6fcua8d [tinyurl.com] http://tinyurl.com/3f6mf8w [tinyurl.com] and http://tinyurl.com/3poo5rp [tinyurl.com]).Something else to consider; in your home you may have one or two Windows PCs. You probably have four or more devices running Linux (often in the guise of BusyBox). Common examples are routers, set-top boxes, printers.Public-facing web-serv

I am an EFF member. I would recommend you join us. Its cheep and you can purchase some nice hats and keychains or just donate. i have purchased a cool cap. I donate and every time i see EFF in the news I donate more. We need to talk less and do more. And we can do more by supporting EFF. Contributions are tax deductible. Also when you are signing up you there is place on where you can tell them the reason you are donating. mine? "Protect software freedom and fight for the right to run Open So

IMHO this renewal is not so bad as when Microsoft fanboy Miguel De Icaza was still with Novell/SUSE. He was the one who pushed the interoperability deal so far to even recreate Silverlight as Moonlight and make it depend on a proprietary codec package from Microsoft. Moonlight in turn is based on Mono and I find the injection of Mono (into GNOME etc.) to be one of the biggest threats to FOSS.

Now that De Icaza and his team were fired, all that's left from the deal is that SLES is certified to run on Hyper-V

From my knowledge Mono is too slow to be used for anything more than user level applications which are not really a threat to gtk/gnome. Having alternatives that use mono is not really a threat to FOSS. If having.NET on Linux was such a damaging thing Microsoft would have done it far better ages ago.

On a side note the following command should comfort you$ zypper rm *mono*it leaves you having to install shotwell and your choice of music player but its not that bad.

Its not a dependency for the desktop environment just its applications. Yes its right though gnome but if your package manger is any good you should be be able to cut it off at the libmono-2_0-1 dependency and have it clean up the rest. There are at least gtk alternatives for all mono applications.When mono starts killing off non mono applications you can start to worry but until then.NET compatibility is good for Linux adoption in enterprise and banshee, eye and do can be uninstalled in seconds.